we either have a system, or we do not.
I want to be clear about something, because people keep trying to put me in boxes that don’t actually exist.
I can stand shoulder to shoulder with anyone who stands up against the federal government. That position isn’t fashionable or reactive for me; it’s foundational. Centralized power, especially federal power, is the most concentrated and least accountable force in American life. When it turns violent against its own citizens, that should alarm everyone, regardless of ideology or tribe. This is the paramount issue, full stop.
If you’re questioning federal enforcement, demanding accountability, or pushing back when a federal agent kills an American citizen, I’m with you. No caveats. No qualifiers. But my boundary is firm, and it is not flexible: the rule of law supersedes everything.
Not outrage. Not moral certainty. Not emergency rhetoric. Not “this time is different.”
The rule of law is not something you invoke when it produces an outcome you like. It is the only mechanism that makes liberty possible in a pluralistic society. Without it, you don’t get freedom; you get shifting forms of coercion depending on who feels morally justified in the moment.
The killing of Alex Pretti last week has made this impossible to ignore.
Say his name out loud: Alex Pretti. Not as a slogan, not as a chant, but as a fact.
A citizen is dead after an encounter with federal authority. That fact alone demands seriousness, restraint, and process. It should slow people down. Instead, what I’ve watched—especially from people who regularly insist they value nuance—is speed, certainty, and immediate conclusions. And I’ll be honest: that impulse is human. I’ve felt it too.
But that impulse is precisely what the rule of law exists to restrain. Unfortunately, this pattern is not new. It has played out repeatedly over the last decade.
Kyle Rittenhouse was in legal possession of a firearm, exercising his Second Amendment right during a period of unrest. When his life was threatened, he acted to preserve it, tragically killing two people and wounding a third. A jury reviewed the evidence, examined the footage, heard testimony, and acquitted him. The process was long, difficult, and unsatisfying for many people—and that’s the point. The system functioned as designed.
Many on the right accepted that outcome as evidence the system matters. Many on the left rejected it, arguing the verdict itself proved injustice.
Now change up the scenario.
When Luigi Mangione murdered a CEO in cold blood, many of the same voices protesting immigration enforcement openly endorsed the killing. There was no patience for process, no interest in evidence, motive, or trial. The victim’s identity collapsed into a single descriptor, “rich CEO,” as if that alone justified execution. The rule of law evaporated the moment it became inconvenient.
Same failure. Different direction.
Then there’s Ashley Babbitt. When she was killed at the Capitol on January 6th, many on the right elevated her into a martyr, flattening her into a symbol and skipping legal context. Many on the left responded with mockery—“what did you expect?”—treating death as a punchline. Once again, process was discarded in favor of tribal satisfaction.
These are not isolated incidents. They are the same inconsistency repeated over and over, depending on which “side” the person belonged to.
That matters. Investigations matter. Process matters.
And yet:
Everyone believes in the rule of law until it produces an outcome they don’t like. Everyone demands due process until they’re convinced they already know the answer. Everyone warns about state violence until that violence aligns with their narrative.
This is where I draw my line.
I can disagree about policy. I can tolerate differences in values, priorities, and tactics. I can put aside trivial disagreements to preserve relationships. But the moment someone abandons process, endorses punishment without trial, or treats certainty as a substitute for evidence, I can no longer stand with them. When you meet someone at that point, it’s important to recognize they’re not opposing power; they’re just arguing over who should wield it.
This is also where the situation becomes genuinely complicated.
Watching communities, and even local institutions, push back against federal authority actually is intrinsically American. Resistance to distant power is part of our national DNA. There’s something deeply familiar about it. But that familiarity raises uncomfortable questions we are not asking honestly enough.
Is resistance to federal power justified when that power is broadly unwanted by the people? Or does organized obstruction fundamentally undermine American law and sovereignty? At what point does duty to country outweigh obedience to law? If organizing to obstruct the state is illegal, what isn’t? And when, exactly, does the state have too much power—and who gets to decide?
These aren’t rhetorical questions. They’re the heart of the problem.
The mob worked in 1776 because of an underlying, unifying cause and identity, but It does not work in 2025. we’re too broken. and at the same time, neither does unchecked state authority.
The mob cannot win. The state cannot win. Only a functioning system can. but, a house divided against itself cannot stand.
What’s missing right now is normalcy. And normalcy only exists when sensible people are willing to defend boring things - process, restraint, and consistencY, even when they’re emotionally unsatisfying. That sensibility is thin at the moment. Our politics don’t just feel broken; they are broken.
This is where smugness becomes corrosive.
When one side congratulates itself that the other is “finally waking up,” while failing to notice it has adopted the same shortcuts, exemptions, and moral loopholes that fueled its opponent’s rise, nothing improves. Refusing to clean your own house doesn’t weaken your enemy; it recruits them. This stopped being about left versus right a long time ago. It’s about whether principles survive pressure.
You don’t defeat tyranny by borrowing its shortcuts. You don’t preserve liberty by skipping its safeguards. And you don’t honor the dead by replacing investigation with certainty.
So here’s the uncomfortable truth: we either uphold the system in its entirety, or we don’t have a system at all. If the rule of law only matters when it produces outcomes you prefer, then it doesn’t matter. If juries and trials are legitimate only when they agree with you, then you don’t believe in justice; you believe in validation.
I want accountability. I want restraint. I want federal power questioned relentlessly.
But I want all of it through the rule of law, because that’s the only thing standing between a free society and chaos—no matter how much chaos dresses itself as righteousness.
Say his name: Alex Pretti.
Then do the harder, quieter thing. Defend the system that can actually deliver justice, even when it’s slow, frustrating, and unsatisfying. Because once we decide we don’t need it anymore, we don’t get to act surprised by what comes next.
